


daniel in the den

by orpheus_under_starlight



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Flash Fiction, Other, Pre-TFA, Vignette, a meditation: the tragedy of ben solo, his defiance will shake the stars, reylo present
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-08 08:36:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14101536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orpheus_under_starlight/pseuds/orpheus_under_starlight
Summary: “When have I ever not lovedthe pain of love? But this has movedpast love to mania. This has the strongclench of the madman, this isgripping the ledge of unreason, beforeplunging howling into the abyss.”—Derek Walcott, “The Fist”





	daniel in the den

 

It starts like this:

 

Kylo Ren decides that he will not be seduced by the Light. He has gone too far, searched too long, come up with nothingness in his hands instead of all he’d hoped to find. There is nothing left for him on homely shores.

 

The Light, in turn, is _very persuasive._

 

He is no stranger to ghosts, strange, morbid child that he is, son of heroes and galactic leaders. He stands always in the tall shadow they cast. When he is younger, he sees kind smiles and beautiful eyes in the dreams he has when he exhausts himself by staying up late waiting for his mother to return or his father to burn through the night sky in a blazing line of blue. Even when he is older, he hears the voices—hears a monster in his head, one he finds himself surrendering to bit by bit, moment by moment. He takes all these and more on like a second skin, wraps himself in a cloak of memories, and puts his hands over the ears of his heart.

 

The kind ghosts vanish.

 

Okay, he figures. He deserves that, probably, for being a disappointment, for not living up to Uncle Luke’s expectations, for not being strong enough. For being too much like Vader. Vader probably didn’t have a kind young woman with deep brown eyes and a soothing voice to sing him to sleep when the nightmares came for him, or a strong bearded man to carry him on his back when he stumbled again through that deathly-looking ravine filled with statues of forgotten men.

 

Vader was probably alone. Just like him.

 

In a way, he thinks it must be like walking backwards into the Maw—face the galaxy and spurn it, like the lone voice that’s left tells him to, the one that reassures him that he will find something other than emptiness in the shadows. He’s studied the legends, the old tales, the bits and pieces of Jedi praxis that survived the purges; he knows the difference between himself and the other dissenters, knows the difference between him and someone like the mythic figure of Revan, who was Dark then Light then somewhere in-between (though the Jedi hardly said as much).

 

The thing is that Kylo—Ben, still, just about, not quite—knows _exactly_ what he is doing.

 

He isn’t stupid. He knows he’s making a mistake, even as he makes it. Even when he sits motionless in the cold shuttle watching the flames of Skywalker’s inchoate Jedi Order fall away from the earth of Yavin IV, his few remaining classmates staring sightlessly at the walls, Kylo Ren is perfectly cognizant: he is a fool of the highest order, making a cosmic error, ripping open a tear in the fabric of the stars. The Force is unbalanced. The Dark croons.

 

Kylo, for his part, is tired.

 

All the teachings in the universe could not guide him. Even Supreme Leader seems, for the briefest of seconds, to be a charlatan peddling his ideology to every young spacefaring lad that happens to show some promise; Kylo quickly puts the thought aside, pretends he never thought it, because he is getting very good at denial and he has been told that once he joins Snoke, he and his Knights will be joined to him in all truth. But the seed remains, and he directs it at all he has left behind.

 

 _You could give me nothing,_ he tells the past. He imagines himself looking into Han Solo’s eyes. _Nothing I needed, nothing I wanted. At least I chose this path for myself._

 

The shuttle engine hums. The Force is silent.

 

Out of the corner of his eye, Kylo sees something, feels something: dark eyes like a forest, a mind like an ocean, a steel trap, an abyss. He glances at the left end of the shuttle and sees only the door to the cockpit.

 

Nothing.

 

His classmates are with him, sure, quiet under the weight of the atrocity they have committed together, but suddenly he feels like the only person in the universe, tall and gawky and unable to fit into his seat, a graveyard with his mother’s eyes and his father’s nose.

 

Kylo Ren tilts his head and studies the rim of the durasteel window. He focuses on the glint of the overheads on that narrow sliver of metal like it’s the only thing he has left. The irony—a ray of light in an otherwise dark space—hardly escapes him. He knows it for what it is. All things have their own purpose, be it large or insignificant.

 

The overheads flicker. The light does not.

 

He is being given a message.

 

His lips thin. _This will stop the dreams. This will be my fulfillment. I am finally becoming what I was meant to be._

 

Oh, if _only._


End file.
